Ralph Lauren quietly shuttered its two-year-old 20,000-square-foot store last week. Other brands are expected to close boutiques in a city that has lost its luster for cash-rich mainland Chinese tourists.

Facebook Focuses on Fashion With Open Graph

The social networking site is looking to cater to fashion and shopping apps in the digital space.

More than ever before, Facebook is looking to cater to fashion and shopping apps in the digital space.

In the same way the social platform has seen success with music, video and lifestyle apps since introducing this technology, Facebook will start sharing new stats from apps such as Lyst, Pose, Fab, Giantnerd and Fashiolista as of 1 p.m. today.

It’s no secret the fashion world is fast adopting Facebook’s Open Graph — and there are numbers to prove it.

According to Facebook, it’s also compiled a list of “best practices” for companies in the commerce space, calling this sector one of the quickest growing among timeline app users. According to Facebook’s Austin Haugen, these social apps boast impressive stats with respect to traffic to their respective Web site and increased mobile installs since adopting the Open Graph.

Billed by Pose chief executive officer Dustin Rosen the a global style platform where consumers utilize product every day to discover fashion from around the world, curated by both fellow users, influencers, celebrities, bloggers and brands without any editor in between, the app has seen its daily sign ups increase by over 10 times for its mobile app and Web site. 40 million “poses” are viewed on a monthly basis — a 400 percent increase from the end of 2011.

“This [Open Graph] has allowed us to take what we’ve already built and tie it to the worlds largest social network,” Rosen said, adding that Pose has “well surpassed” one million downloads since the company integrated this technology throughout its platform, which includes Pose.com and apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices. “Our users are passionate about fashion and style and they use Pose everyday to explore style and fashion from round the world the same way they would a magazine or blog, and being able to discover and share with their Facebook friends is a natural behavior to what they do socially.”

Growth has also been great for Pose’s almost 100 retail partners, which include Levi’s, American Eagle and Theory because of what Rosen calls the ability to directly connect with shoppers through posting relevant, on-brand content.

Design app Fab has increased its members to over 4.5 million (from 1.8 million) since it started using the Open Graph in January, and social shopping site Lyst’s user base and traffic saw traffic double in the same time. Between 20 and 40 per cent of Fab’s traffic comes from Facebook, and for Lyst — users coming from Facebook spent 50 percent more time on the site than other users. And although newer to the game, sites like Shoedazzle, Go Try It On!, Ideeli, TheFancy and OpenSky have recently launched timeline apps.

Among the best practices detailed by Haugen, brands should “use a call to action” by clearly encouraging people to add your app, “create multiple action types” that include more than just the “like” button and “use object types to create categories” that makes it easy for people to build personal timeline aggregations.

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@rebeccaminkoff is bringing self-checkout to high fashion: The brand has partnered with @queuehop to bring its customers self-checkout options, beginning this holiday season at its SoHo store. (📷: @aurorarosephoto)